I would like to apologize to everyone here for my rant. It was indeed unprofessional for me to do so. I just happened to fall upon this topic during a time when I was in a heated dispute with a local paid agency (a dispute in which I briefly touched on), and the timing was all wrong.
I can assure you that as a rural EMS volunteer agency, we do strive to provide "paid level service" at the volunteer level. Our agency has the largest district in the county (possibly the state). We had 560 calls last year, and our average response time is 4.12 minutes (AVERAGE FOR 2008). I recently read an article that professional paid agencies average response (tone out to roll out) is roughly 5 minutes, rural volunteer is closer to 10 minutes. In this regard we are well above average, and I can assure you our level of care is also.
With few exceptions of individual members of local paid agencies which provide limited mutual aide to our district, the paid agencies in my area are the most unprofessional I have ever encountered, and recently, it has been a lot worse.